The artist LorenZo lived the most extraordinary life. He was born in Yugoslavia in the mid 1960’s to a Serbian mother and a Croatian father, and he was christened and named Željko Rogošić. He was a very talented and academic child, he found science and engineering came second nature to him. However, his creative side always took precedence. In the mid-eighties he was the lead singer in a pop group called Lorenzo Marconi and he achieved recognition and fame throughout the Balkans. His look and style was once referred to as him being the fictional love child of Boy George and Adam Ant.

During the political conflict which divided Yugoslavia into individual territories and countries, Lorenzo felt lost and very depressed, seeing the country he loved being ripped apart, regularly hearing of the deaths of close friends and relatives. Lorenzo was a man of beauty and peace and he decided that against all odds he would do something to bring some glamour, some little bit of elegance and style to a back drop of death, bombs and destruction. So against all odds and with the support of a military government whom he had nothing but contempt for, he opened a College of Fashion and Art, right in the middle of Belgrade. Because of the war he was able to employ professors and tutors of the highest ability, and was able to educate and award internationally recognised diplomas and degrees.

Due to personal danger and threats to his life, Lorenzo packed up his most important possessions, which were mostly his art work and he fled the country to Italy.

Rome was full of beauty and promise for Lorenzo, steeped in history and art. He fell in love, and not only with the City. After an intense course of learning Italian, and by meeting up with friends and acquaintances he had made from the social circles he had mixed in as a celebrity and as a the owner of a college, he soon found himself working for an Italian television production company, the gentleman who employed him was a personal friend of the Pope, so not many doors were closed to Lorenzo. There is then a lot missing from public files about Lorenzo’s love life. It is known that he had a very private love affair with a very rich young member of what would be the Italian Royal family, if there was one. Apparently this affair had to be kept very quiet, Lorenzo had said that if it had become public knowledge his life would have been in danger. He said that he felt like a bird kept locked in a golden cage, living as he did in part of a palace situated by the famous Spanish steps.

Lorenzo’s life was full of great diversity, wealth and poverty, love and fear, celebrity and invisibility.

His other talents included being one of Guerlain’s top make-up artists and was employed both by the family and then by LVMH when they bought the company.

There is so much more to LorenZo’s life and this is where you are invited to add your stories to this site, with what I hope will turn in to a very comprehensive biography of a truly incredible man’s life.

When seeking the creative skills and international talent's of European fine arts, most will automatically think Florence, Rome, Paris and London.

LorenZo, made London his home and was proud to become a British Citizen and referred to himself as a British painter and designer. He had in fact travelled and studied the arts abroad, from Eastern European schools of art he moved first to Florence then to Rome. After years of creative work in Rome and some in Paris, he moved to London. This is where and when LorenZo realised how crucial it would be to actually step out and follow his instincts, to recognise and focus this enormous inspirational energy, if he were to make a difference.

He did make a difference, in his own words he described himself, "I am a trained painter, drawing needs to strike an emotion and communicate feelings. I like having an atmosphere and depth, communicating strong imperfect feelings with attention to order in composition. Two dimensional images, capturing immense energy, observing the present, lessons from the past and predictions for the future, this combination becomes an open window in a multidimensional world. Within me they all come together and become alive."

LorenZo had the ability, through his work, to isolate a moment in time and allow the viewer to study slices of the human condition, for detail and subtle implications that go beyond the moment. Although trained in academic principles, LorenZo chose to work with very few references giving his figures and their surroundings an expressionistic quality that is uniquely his own. By working in black and white the paintings take on a timeless and historical quality that leaves the viewer with the feeling that LorenZo very closely observed and documented something from within the viewers life or his own.

Exhibitions of the drawings have been organised in Europe, with storming interest from the media, art academies, collectors and also from institutes for paranormal research. That intense pressure resulted in LorenZo retreating into a rather isolated, solitary way of life, only socialising with a few very close friends.

When LorenZo died the world lost not only a great character, but the art world was robbed of an incredible artist, his unique talent which drew from the day to day observations that he made, was added to by his ability to call upon the supernatural and spiritual feelings from within himself, to then produce a work of art showing an intense emotion that we can all relate to, we can feel it and see it within our minds as we are stimulated and moved by his work.